THE BIBLE AS BOOK OF BEAUTY: ON THE ROLE OF BIBLICAL AESTHETICS IN SECULARISED TIMES AND CONTEXTS
Abstract
This article investigates reasons for the decline in relevance of the Bible in social and religious discourse as a result of secularisation in contemporary times. It firstly analyses how a particular scientific ideal in the religious discourse has contributed to this decline, as well as ecclesiastical dogmatism, anti-intellectualism and the weaponising of religion that promoted and resulted in Bible-fatigue. In the second major section, a turn in the state of affairs is analysed, with attention to the contribution of contextual theologies to theoretical reflection about reductionist intellectualism and more recently, the promotion of aesthetic insights. In a third section, the article investigates more fully the aesthetic nature of the Bible that has often contributed to a reinvigorating of the Bible. The article concludes with the proposal that it is a spiritual reading that is explicitly approached from an aesthetical perspective that will create consciousness and knowledge of the Bible’s beauty and mediate its transformative potential, and this will help counter the secularising trend that marginalised the Bible.Authors retain copyright and grant the Journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this Journal.
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